Journalist quickly becomes laughing stock after boasting about suing Trump for blocking her on Twitter

A “queer feminist legal analyst” has sued President Donald Trump after she was blocked by the president from viewing his personal Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump.

Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza alleged that her career has suffered irreparable damage in the weeks after she was personally barred via Twitter’s “block” function from replying to or interacting in any way with Trump’s personal tweets or Twitter account.

Gone now is my ability to participate in the timeliest and most robust conversations around law, policy, and politics on Twitter—those around the president’s tweets. Taking part in these exchanges was an ideal way to stay current on not just facts, but new ideas. These threads make up the marketplace of ideas in which my peers and potential employers, colleagues, and audience are present and participating. I’ve been forced out and have no meaningful way to rejoin them.

I didn’t think being blocked on Twitter was a big deal at first. It’s just a button you can click, a way to mute an ex or tune out trolls’ attacks. But it turns out that when the person who blocks you is the president of the United States, it can matter quite a bit. Every day I’m blocked I lose opportunities to advance my views and engage others’—literally the reason a reader follows a writer’s work, the substance a publication pays a writer for—in these conversations. I can’t fire off a 140-word tweet, create a thread, or share pieces I write to drive discussion within these very conversations. That quick click I thought was so inconsequential is constraining my career in ways I have yet to fully appreciate.

When Buckwalter-Poza boasted about the suit on Twitter, she was widely mocked:

One person even offered a bit of advice:

Trump is being sued by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which advocates for free speech. White House press secretary Sean Spicer and Trump’s director of social media, Dan Scavino, are also named as defendants in the suit. The suit was filed in the Southern district of New York.

The plaintiffs allege that Trump’s personal Twitter account, which boasts nearly 34 million followers, is a public forum, and being blocked for their viewpoints is a violation of their First Amendment rights. Public forums are areas that typically receive the strongest First Amendment protects.

The plaintiffs seek to be unblocked from Trump’s personal Twitter account, in addition to Trump being barred from future banning over opposing viewpoints.